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Two joggers find a baby alone in a stroller with a note taped to him saying that his mother was kidnapped. The note reads, "The mean, mean man has a monster in his head. Find him by tomorrow or my mom will be dead. Rupert Daniel Kilmore"

Benson and Stabler interview a watchmaker named Rupert Kilmore about the rape and abduction. He expresses his disgusted that a rapist used his name, when a call comes from an anonymous man telling Rupert to "Give the detectives the fax". The fax reads "Once there were so cops so dumb, they took hours to get to clue number 1. Mommy's running out of time, so the answer is written above the rhyme."

Benson and Stabler track down a junkie who sent the fax to them at the watch store. He has a message for them but he is too high to remember. After 8 hours the clues they get are the words Hog, Pat, Mend, Top, Yarn. Eric Liebert comes to the precinct saying that the baby was his son and finds out his wife Julie is the kidnapping victim. Captain Cragen receives a envelope via messenger with Julie Liebert's severed ear.

Munch, Cragen, and Staber crack the code from the clue words given by the junkie. Benson and Stabler go to the payphone only to discover they were too late and missed the call. They trace the call and are led to a warehouse where the discover Julie's body with "RDK is ----->" indicating it means "RDK is back", and another riddle saying that he's abducted another woman.

The detectives discover the body of the second victim covered in roses with symbols drawn on her feet and a newspaper from that day expressing his disappointment in the lack of media attention.

They talk with a surviving victim of the original RDK killings and find out she was interviewed by someone impersonating a reporter, which leads them to Humphrey Becker. He is not the real RDK, but a copy cat. They search Humphrey's apartment and find a diary indicating where he plans to take his next victim, a showgirl. While picking up his next intended victim Benson gets a call saying the survivor from the original murders is missing. Benson goes to her apartment and finds Humphrey laying in her bed.

During interrogation he refuses to say where Jeanette is. His mother shows up and talks with him and he clearly hates her. Stabler locks him in a closet, he's afraid of small dark spaces, and he finally tells them where she is. They find Jeanette trapped in an old refrigerator, but alive.

RDK is probably based on the notorious BTK killer, Dennis Rader, who murdered ten people between 1974 and 1991; by sheer coincidence, when the episode aired in October 2004 - 13 years after the last killing and the trail seemingly long gone cold - police in Wichita, Kansas, having received a letter from BTK about a previously unknown murder, were busy making the case which would lead to Rader's arrest four months later.

During the episode, Becker leaves a note saying "Who do I have to kill to get on page 1 above the fold?". This is similar to the opening of a letter written by BTK killer Dennis Rader, who wrote, "How many do I have to Kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention."